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Monday, 4 March 2013

The Death of a Peer, or, Lord Lyttelton's Ghost - by Katherine Langrish

Thomas, Second Baron Lyttelton

“Sir,” said Dr Johnson to his friend Dr Adams, “it is the
most extraordinary thing that has happened in my day.”

He was speaking of the mysterious circumstances attending
the death of Thomas, Second Baron Lyttelton, known - in true Georgette Heyer fashion - as ‘the wicked Lord
Lyttelton’, born 30 January
1744, and died, as we shall see, on the night of the 27th November 1779.

Born with every advantage, Lyttelton was educated at Eton and Oxford,
a charming and talented boy: too charming and talented for his own good,
perhaps, for he became a notorious rake.He fought duels, and ‘excelled the ordinary model of young debauchery
everywhere’. He married to pay his gambling debts and then ran off to Paris
with a barmaid; he entered the House of Commons in 1768 as MP for Bewdley, but
was unseated for bribery the following year; he disappeared again to the
Continent; but when his father died in 1774 he returned and took his seat in
the Lords where, to secure his support, ministers bought him over with a
lucrative sinecure – something which would pay him money and for which he would
have to do little or no work – the ancient post of Chief Justice of Eyre beyond
the Trent.

Four years later, however, on the 25th November 1779, (possibly
disappointed by his failure to obtain another sinecure and become a Keeper of
the Privy Seals) Lyttelton changed sides and denounced Government and Court in
a vitriolic speech. Horace Walpole comments ‘Lyttelton … has turned against the
Court.' Regarding his existing sinecure, Lyttelton said, ‘Perhaps I may not
keep it long.’

He was correct.By midnight on November 27th,
he was dead.

On the night before his speech – the night of Wednesday 24th
November – Lyttelton saw a ghost which told him he would die within three
days. Between the Wednesday and the Friday, he mentioned this to various
friends and acquaintances: Rowan Hamilton, and one Captain Ascough, who told a
lady, who told another lady named Mrs Thrale who wrote it down in her diary on Sunday
28th November, the morning after Lyttelton’s midnight death:

Yesterday a lady from Wales dropped
in and said that she had been at Drury
Lane on Friday night.“How,” I asked, “were you entertained?” “Very
strangely indeed!Not with the play,
though, but the discourse of a Captain Ascough, who averred that a friend of
his, Lord Lyttelton, has SEEN A SPIRIT, who warned him that he will die in
three days.I have thought of nothing
else since.”

Horace Walpole, writing to a friend on Monday November 29th,
says:

Lord Lyttelton is dead
suddenly.…The story is given out, that
he looked ill, AND HAD SAID HE SHOULD NOT LIVE THREE DAYS; that he had gone to
his house in Epsom… with a caravan of nymphs; and on Saturday had retired
before supper to take rhubarb; returned, supped heartily, went into the next
room and died in an instant.

Within a short time, however, Walpole has picked up on the gossip around
town: Lyttleton had claimed to have seen a robin – or some other bird – which
changed into a woman and delivered him a death warning. By December 11th Walpole writes with dry humour to another friend that ghost
stories are back in fashion!

Lord Lyttelton’s vision has
revived the taste; though it seems a little odd that an APPARITION should
despair of getting access to his lordship’s bed, in the shape of a young woman,
without being forced to use the disguise of a robin red-breast.

The ‘nymphs’ to whom Walpole refers in his first letter were
the three Misses Amphlett; residing with their ‘chaperon’ Mrs Flood at
Lyttelton’s house in Hill Street, Berkeley Square.A few months later, in February 1780, Lord
Westcote, Lyttelton’s uncle, questioned them, and wrote:

On November 25th, at
breakfast in Hill Street,
Lord Lyttelton told the young ladies and their chaperon that he had had an
extraordinary DREAM.

He seemed to be in a room which a
bird flew into; the bird changed to a woman in white, who told him he should
die in three days.

He ‘did not much regard it,
because he could in some measure account for it; for that a few days before he
had been with Mrs Dawson, when a robin red-breast flew into her room.’On the morning of Saturday [the 27th]
he told the same ladies that he was very well and believed he should ‘BILK THE
GHOST’. On that day – Saturday – he …went to bed after eleven, ordered rolls
for breakfast, and, in bed, ‘died without a groan’ as his servant was disengaging
him from his waistcoat.

There was no inquest.

And there's a postscript: on the fatal night, 27th November
1779, Mr Miles Peter Andrews, a friend of Lyttelton’s who was staying at
Dartford, was woken when his bed-curtains were pulled open and he was
confronted by Lord Lyttelton ‘in his robe de chambre and nightcap’. Suspecting
a practical joke, Andrews rang the bell for his servant, and on turning back
found Lord Lyttelton gone.The house and
garden were searched in vain, and about four in the afternoon of the next day,
a friend arrived with news of Lyttelton’s death. The event was recorded in the
next number of the Scots Magazine,
December 1779.

But let us return to Dr Johnson, with whom we began,
speaking of the mysterious affair with his friend Dr Adams.Johnson was famously afraid of death.He continues, “I heard it with my own ears
from his uncle Lord Westcote. I am so glad to have evidence of the spiritual
world that I am willing to believe it.”

Dr Adams replies (doubtless alluding to the Scriptures),
“You have evidence enough – good evidence, which needs no support.”

What a delightful and humorous recounting! Dr.Johnson needed the independent verification, through gossip and "documents", of what the scriptures had written ( "I like to have more! Dr.Johnson growls. "Faith without ghosts is dead!

What a delightful and humorous recounting! Dr.Johnson needed the independent verification, through gossip and "documents", of what the scriptures had written ( "I like to have more! Dr.Johnson growls. "Faith without ghosts is dead!

I was wondering what kind of caravan, would they be mounted on camels, or riding in a canary-coloured horse-drawn job? I think, myself, it was the rhubarb wot done it. I always knew it was bad for people. Kath, I adore this post, SO eighteenth-century. Was he murdered, in fact, by government agents masquerading as nymphs? I do love Johnson growling. One always imagines him doing that a lot of the time.

Thankyou all - I admit I am myself particularly taken with the juxtaposition of the caravan of nymphs and the rhubarb - and with Walpole's crack about the spirit not really needing to disguise itself as a robin to get into Lyttelton's bed...

I do seem to remember that superstition about the robin, Marie-Louise. Curious, isn't it? And even more curious, the rapid unrolling of events.

A truly superb post, this - and there's a novel in it for sure, if anyone should care to write it...

The caravan, the nymphs and the rhubarb - priceless!

Ah, such delicious language we had at our disposal back in the 18th century. I think i shall have to write something set in such a time period just to have the excuse to write the dialogue in the English of the time.

I wonder if this Lyttleton wasn't the inspiration for Lord Luxon in Linda Buckley-Archer's wonderful and underrated time-slip trilogy?

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